What "Account based in" means on X

#What "Account based in" tells you

"Account based in" answers one question: from which country does X see this account connect? X works the answer out from the IP addresses the account has used over time, so the label follows where an account is run, not where its owner was born or says they live. To read it for any public account, paste the handle into the free Twitter Account Location Finder.

The label is easy to confuse with two other location fields. X's Help Center keeps all three apart (opens in a new tab), and only one of them is both public and set by X:

• Account based in

  Who sets it

  X

  Who sees it

  Anyone, on a public account

  What it comes from

  The account's aggregated IP addresses

• Profile location

  Who sets it

  The owner

  Who sees it

  Anyone

  What it comes from

  Whatever the owner types, or nothing

• Country setting

  Who sets it

  X, and the owner can correct it

  Who sees it

  Only the owner

  What it comes from

  The IP address and, if enabled, precise location; the United States when X can't tell

Editing the profile location or the private country setting leaves "Account based in" exactly as it was. That is why the label became a quick test for accounts that claim to be local: a bio can say Ohio, but the label shows where the connections come from.

What the label doesn't tell you matters as much. It holds no city, street, coordinates or live position, and it says nothing about citizenship. An account based in Nigeria may belong to a Nigerian, to an agency hired there or to someone who moved to Lagos ten years ago. It also says nothing about where single posts were written: for posts tagged with a place, use near: and within: from the Twitter search operators.

#How to check where an X account is based

Open the account on X and tap the date it joined: the About this account panel opens with the country or region next to "Account based in".

1. Open the profile in the X app or on x.com. On x.com you need to be signed in to open the panel.

2. Tap the "Joined" date under the bio, next to the profile location and website.

3. Read the rows. "Account based in" shows a country, such as Canada, or a region, such as Europe. "Connected via" sits a few rows below it.

The panel shows one account at a time. The free finder above reads the same row without an X account, and for a list of handles the API route in the next section returns it as data.

#Check a list of accounts with Sorsa API

For a list of accounts, use Sorsa API, a Twitter (X) API and scraper: GET /about (opens in a new tab) returns "Account based in" as country and "Connected via" as source for any public account, one account per request, from $1.40 per 1,000 accounts at up to 20 accounts a second. It needs one API key and no X developer account, and it never touches your own X login.

The official X API has no such field. Its user object carries only the typed profile location, which X's own data dictionary (opens in a new tab) says "may not indicate a valid location", at $0.010 per user read: $10.00 per 1,000 profiles that still leave you without the label.

1. Get an API key. Sign up and copy the key from the dashboard. The first 100 requests are free and need no card.

2. Call GET /about for one account. Pass exactly one of username, user_id or user_link.

   curl -G "https://api.sorsa.io/v3/about" \
     -H "ApiKey: YOUR_API_KEY" \
     --data-urlencode "username=tidewater_ceramics_studio"
   

   {
     "country": "Canada",
     "source": "US App Store",
     "username_change_count": 2,
     "last_username_change_at": "2023-06-19T14:02:11Z",
     "is_blue_verified": true,
     "premium_start_at": "2025-02-03T09:40:27Z",
     "affiliate_username": null
   }
   

3. Run it over your list. Put one handle per line in handles.csv. The script writes each account's label, its connection source and its username changes to based-in.csv. A 429 means you passed 20 requests a second, so it waits and retries; a 403 means the key is wrong or out of requests.

   import csv
   import time
   
   import requests
   
   URL = "https://api.sorsa.io/v3/about"
   HEADERS = {"ApiKey": "YOUR_API_KEY"}
   
   
   def about(handle):
       while True:
           r = requests.get(URL, headers=HEADERS,
                            params={"username": handle.lstrip("@")})
           if r.status_code == 429:  # over 20 requests a second
               time.sleep(1)
               continue
           if r.status_code == 404:  # no such account
               return {}
           r.raise_for_status()  # 403: wrong key or out of requests
           return r.json()
   
   
   with open("handles.csv") as src, \
           open("based-in.csv", "w", newline="") as out:
       writer = csv.writer(out)
       writer.writerow(["username", "based_in", "connected_via",
                        "username_changes"])
       for row in csv.reader(src):
           if not row:
               continue
           handle = row[0].strip()
           a = about(handle)
           writer.writerow([handle, a.get("country", "not found"),
                            a.get("source", ""),
                            a.get("username_change_count", "")])
   

   import fs from "node:fs";
   
   const URL = "https://api.sorsa.io/v3/about?username=";
   const HEADERS = { ApiKey: "YOUR_API_KEY" };
   const sleep = (ms) => new Promise((r) => setTimeout(r, ms));
   const cell = (v) => `"${String(v ?? "").replaceAll('"', '""')}"`;
   
   const handles = fs.readFileSync("handles.csv", "utf8")
     .split("\n").map((s) => s.trim()).filter(Boolean);
   
   const rows = [["username", "based_in", "connected_via",
     "username_changes"]];
   for (const handle of handles) {
     const url = URL + encodeURIComponent(handle.replace(/^@/, ""));
     let res = await fetch(url, { headers: HEADERS });
     while (res.status === 429) { // over 20 requests a second
       await sleep(1000);
       res = await fetch(url, { headers: HEADERS });
     }
     if (res.status === 403) throw new Error("Wrong key or out of requests");
     const a = res.ok ? await res.json() : { country: "not found" };
     rows.push([handle, a.country, a.source, a.username_change_count]);
   }
   fs.writeFileSync("based-in.csv",
     rows.map((r) => r.map(cell).join(",")).join("\n"));
   

One handle is one request, so 1,000 accounts cost from $1.40 ($4.90 at the Starter rate) and take about 50 seconds at 20 requests per second; 100K accounts take about 83 minutes. If your list holds user IDs instead of handles, pass user_id, or turn handles into IDs first with the guide to the Twitter user ID from username. To put the bio location and join date next to each label, GET /info-batch (opens in a new tab) returns both for up to 100 accounts per request.

Good to know

country reads Unknown when X has too little data on an account. Keep those rows as their own group instead of guessing a country, and remember that a failed request is never charged. To count a whole audience by country instead, the Twitter location API guide samples an account's followers and shows how close the shares are.

#Every line in the About this account panel

The About this account panel holds up to seven rows, and each one shows only when X has something to put in it. All of them are public on a public account.

• Date joined: the month and year the account was created. GET /info-batch returns the exact created_at.
• Account based in: the country, or a region such as South Asia when the owner chose to show one.
• Verified: whether the account has a blue check and since when; premium_start_at holds that date.
• An affiliate of: the organization that granted the account an affiliate badge, returned as affiliate_username.
• Username changes: how many times the handle changed, and "Last on" with the month of the latest change. "Last on" isn't the last time the account was online: X shows that to no one.
• Connected via: the channel the account uses to reach X, such as a country's App Store, an Android app or the web.

When X suspects a VPN or a proxy, one more line appears: "Country or region may not be accurate."

#How X decides where an account is based

X infers "Account based in" only from the account's aggregated IP addresses, its Help Center says: the country or region "is inferred only by your aggregated IP addresses." Aggregated means X looks at the addresses the account has connected from over time, so a weekend abroad doesn't flip the label at once, while a move or long trip shifts it after a while.

That one sentence rules out most of what AI answers and how-to pages list. The app store region is a different row, "Connected via". The bio location, payment details and posting times play no part in X's description, and GPS and nearby cell towers feed the private country setting, not the public label.

The launch explains much of the confusion. Nikita Bier, X's head of product, announced the experiment in October 2025, and TechCrunch reported (opens in a new tab) the panel on users' own profiles on November 21. It reached every public profile over the weekend of November 22 to 23. Early labels came from an older database process that was wrong for some accounts, Bier said, according to Social Media Today (opens in a new tab). The panel also showed the country where each account was created, which X dropped because the data was "not 100% for old accounts", Privacy Guides reported (opens in a new tab). Screenshots from that week can show a row the panel no longer has.

#What "Connected via" means

"Connected via" names the channel an account uses to reach X: a country's App Store, an Android app or the web. Its country is the App Store or Google Play region the app came from, which follows the owner's Apple or Google account. People rarely change that account, so the row can name a country the owner left years ago.

That makes the two rows answer different questions. "Account based in" says where the account connects from now. "Connected via" says where the app account behind it was set up. When they disagree, the usual reasons are ordinary:

• Based in the UK, connected via the US App Store: someone with a US Apple account who lives in Britain, or a phone bought abroad.
• Based in the US, connected via another country's App Store: an expat, a student or a new arrival who kept the app account from home.
• Connected via the web: the account is used mostly from a browser or a scheduling tool, which is common for brands and agencies.

Neither row is a more "accurate" location: for where an account is run from today, read "Account based in". X's Help Center doesn't define "Connected via" at all, so treat any stronger reading of it as a guess.

#How accurate is "Account based in"?

X itself calls the label an estimate. The note it showed at launch, quoted by NBC News (opens in a new tab), says the data "may not be accurate and can change periodically", and that recent travel or a temporary relocation can affect it. Four situations put the label in the wrong place:

• A VPN or proxy. The account may show the VPN's country. When X suspects one, the panel adds "Country or region may not be accurate", so a VPN that X notices doesn't hide a location quietly.
• Travel and moves. Three NBC News journalists' accounts showed countries they had recently visited, not where they live.
• Accounts run by someone else. A brand managed by an agency abroad can show the agency's country.
• A region or nothing. The owner can show a region instead of the country, and government accounts with a gray check show no location at all.

So read a mismatch as a reason to look closer, never as a verdict. Pick what an account's panel shows below to see what the combination usually means:

The label works best as one signal among several: the join date, the username changes and what the account posts. To check whether an account behaves like a bot, the Twitter bot detection guide covers the other signals.

#Can you change or hide your "Account based in"?

No: X has no setting that hides the label or lets you type a country, and the only choice is to show a region instead of the country. To make that switch:

1. Open your About this account panel by tapping the "Joined" date on your own profile, then the settings gear. The same setting sits in Settings and privacy, Privacy and safety, About your account.

2. Choose country or region. Region shows a wider area, such as North America or Europe; country is the default.

Two things don't change the label. Editing Your account, Account information, Country changes only the private country setting, and editing the profile location changes only the bio. The label moves by itself when you connect from a new country for a while, after a move for example. Connecting through a VPN may move it too, and then adds the accuracy notice that every visitor can see. If the label is plainly wrong, X's Help Center says you can report the problem from the same panel.

#Read the label for one account or a whole list

"Account based in" is X's own estimate of where an account connects from, built only from its IP addresses: a strong hint about who runs an account, never proof of nationality. For one account, the free finder shows it. For a list, use Sorsa API: GET /about returns the label, "Connected via" and the username history for any public account, from $1.40 per 1,000 accounts at 20 a second, and the first 100 requests are free.

#FAQ